Under the Stars
by Pantz
Summary: I've always loved the night.
1. Unus

Disclaimer: Everything from hp books belongs to JK Rowling

Under the Stars 

_Can you tell me how many stars are in the sky? _

Millions. Billions. Infinity. How many grains of sand fill a beach? How many wars have torn their way through the world? How many hearts have broken over the centuries? How many souls have despaired of finding heaven?

She's shivering and although her fingertips feel warm where he's touching her, the rest of her body can't get warm. Her finger tips tingle, but her lips are frozen from the air. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him breathing. A light mist that quickly disappears up into the sky. His eyes are glass, she can tell, shards of golden crystal that glitter in the moonlight.

Her heart thuds, and she can no longer look above. She can no longer look at his face. It hurts, so much, this world that they have all been forced to live within.

How many tears have been cried since the Universe was created? How many lovers have looked into each other's eyes and whispered goodbye? How many romances have ended before they ever began?

If they were lovers, they would be making love right now. Slow and special as they lay together under the bejeweled sky. His fingers would set fire to her entire body. Her lips would suck the breath out of his lungs. Hot gasps as the words I love you are flung within the mess. They would hold each other and whisper about passion. They would shiver with lust as the grass tickles their backs. They would look into each other eyes and see the world as it is meant to be.

_Can you, James? Can you?_

A year ago, maybe more, he would have pulled her into his lap, taken her finger within his hand, and counted each star for her until her laughter warmed the air. He would have kissed her neck, tickled her under the moon, and when he had her pinned to the ground, he would have smiled and told her that he could do anything.

A year ago, she was sixteen and life felt perfect.

How many orphans have awoken in the night to find their world lost in life's debris?

_James?_

He turns towards her and looks so young that she's frightened. She has never seen him so vulnerable. She could never believe he could ever look so lost.

Not him. Not James.

She looks into his eyes, cold eyes, scared eyes, and as his lips slowly part she already knows what he will say. She can feel it in his stare. She can hear it in the wind sweeping through her hair. Her eyes close, and a single tear falls down her cheek.

_No_

He says this, and wipes away her tear with a soft touch. Somewhere far away, a dog barks and a wolf howls, and she can almost feel their pain.

A star falls from the sky when her eyes open, and when he kisses her, her lips cannot get warm.

End 


	2. Duo

_They say there's supposed to be a comet some time this week._

Her green eyes are fixed at the sky. Her breath is uneasy, as if the light feeling in her stomach is not supposed to be there. She almost smiled earlier today. She thought she had forgotten how to do that.

_Is that why you have been dragging me out here?_

She knows he isn't looking at the sky. She can feel the heat on her face from where he's staring. She's blushing, but the moon isn't bright enough for him to be able to tell. Its light has been so dim this past year, not like the stars. They glitter, she knows, like the golden glass within his eyes.

_My father was an astronomer._

Her voice is so quiet her words are lost in the wind before he can hear them. But she tightens her grip on his hand and he knows she's thinking about them. He turns over to look up at those stars she loves too well, but he sees nothing where she sees the world.

What is it about the stars that she finds so enticing?

He wants to say something profound, something to make her laugh and smile. Something that will take the shadow out of her eyes. He wants to find words that are magic. Only, there is nothing to say, nothing to fix her life or change the world, and it hurts so much to believe that because he once thought that magic could do anything. That _he_ could do anything.

And he has never felt so helpless in his life.

_I love you._

Beautiful words, but with childish desperation twisted within them. He is pleading with her, begging, yet neither of them know it. When did he become so young and how did she get so old?

She doesn't answer. She doesn't acknowledge what he said at all except for a slow blink of her eyes.

_Lily?_

Her breathing is light, although her insides feel as though they will explode. She wants to tell him that she knows. She has_ always_ known. And yes, yes she loves him, too. But the words have never passed her lips.

Her eyes close and a few slow tears escape her through her lashes. He can see them glisten on her cheeks and when he wipes them away, her face burns from his touch.

_It will be alright, Lil. I'm going to make everything okay._

He has so much confidence in his voice at the moment, like before when they were children who only had to pretend to live in the world. For a moment, he reminds her of a James she had hated for all that arrogance they both sorely need right now. He reminds her of some far off dream she only ever recalls within a deep sleep about a stranger with laughing eyes she never allowed herself to meet.

She looks at him, a sad smile on her face and the echoes of the past in her eyes.

_Will you change the world, James?_

He looks at their clasped hands, and with the ghost of a tear in his eye he smiles, _I already have._


	3. Tres

_I've always loved the night._

She fingers some wildflowers in the bush beside her. Her hair flows through the wind and she shivers as she picks one particularly beautiful flower off its stem and holds it in her hand. She looks back at him, smiling, but her eyes never once float to the sky above.

The moon is bright tonight and her pale skin glows within the light. She looks like a fairy in the shine, airy movements and an ethereal smile, but her eyes are dark, so furiously human that he isn't sure which part of her is more real.

It is nearing June, but her cheeks are pink from the gripping wind. She holds the flower out to him after she says that, and it isn't the blood red petals that catch his eye or the thorn that stole a drop of blood from her middle finger. It is the dew droplets on the petals because he can see the stars glittering through them.

_The moonlight is beautiful, don't you think, James?_

She's a creature of the night, he has realized this past year. She feels more at peace lying on damp grass in the coldness of night than she ever would sleeping in sand with the sun's fingers lightly caressing her face. The night has been her home since she was a little girl. How is she ever supposed to give that up?

_Most people prefer the day._

She doesn't answer, but turns her palm over and allows the flower to fall on the ground. She can feel his eyes on her again, although she isn't sure if he ever looked away. When her eyes meet his, she can feel that he has never looked at her like that before. His eyes no longer cut into her like the bits of glass that reflected all her own pain and fears. They are all fire tonight.

_I'm sorry it's so cloudy tonight, Lily. I really thought…_

She shakes her head, still not daring to glance at the sky. She crosses her arms over her chest. Why is it so hard to find beauty in the middle of May?

If she could, she would look into his eyes and tell him its okay. That she appreciates the effort, really. She appreciates him, too much some days. She wants to look at him and tell him that the stars aren't so important to her, not like he is. But they have always been her world.

She doesn't cry, she hasn't in a few weeks because the numbness of reality has since set in. She's near him sometimes, and he makes her forget. She's free, almost happy for those few precious hours she is in his arms. She's near him other times, and she cannot stand his soft, wind-blown hair and his stare of glass. She cannot stand those eyes that can build her and destroy her with a single glance.

_The grass is wet._

She walks away from the bush to a tree whose leaves shelter her. She hears a crunching beneath her feet and looks over her shoulder to see her flower lying flat on the ground. He says something, something captured within the noise of the swaying leaves, and she doesn't acknowledge him. She stares at her flower, dead so quickly, forgotten by her in a single moment before she crushed its life with her foot.

Is everything able to be forgotten so?

_Are you listening to me?_

He takes a few steps towards her realizing only now how far she is from him. She has been distant from every one this year. From old friends long forgotten, from new friends with no past to rely on, but never from him.

She won't look at him, and he's afraid. He takes her chin in his hand and lifts her head to his own. His hand rests on her cheek and he stares at her, although her eyes remain veiled with her lashes.

_Let me look at you._

His voice is soft, and she lifts her eyes obediently and catches sight of the bright gold within his own eyes. There is something so desperate about him tonight. Like he needs her, even though she's sure she is the one who would always need him.

He's beautiful to her tonight. A painful picture of beauty capturing everything she feels in a single stare, yet remaining impervious to it himself. His bangs are in his eyes and his lips are chapped and bloody from when he bit them out of nerves earlier that day. He has not a single freckle on his face, she sees. Not one.

Her forehead falls onto his and she begins to cry when he kisses her. His hands move from her hair down to her waist and she realizes, not for the first time, that he has the hands of a child. Slow and cautious and small for a man, a boy just beginning his eighteenth year.

_Marry me._

His words enter her lips and her eyes open as she swallows them. It isn't a question, she knows. He isn't asking her because in some ways he knows that she would never say no. Not here, not tonight, not in this lifetime. She steps back as his words sting her throat and looks at him, this boy, this man, who in a short year has become her everything.

He is wearing his school uniform, a detail she will never forget about tonight. His tie is slung messily around his neck and his shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbow. His front button is undone and his small hands capture hers within them.

Her finger tips tingle.

His eyes are the youngest thing about him. They look so… afraid. They are alight with uncontrolled fear and the determination to hide all of that and seem strong. They have an intense mixture of innocence and reality she has never forgiven him for.

He looks at her and she knows they have their whole lives ahead of them and they're going to waste it on each other.

She breathes as she stares at him. For a moment, she feels the wind blowing by, but she doesn't feel it, not when he's holding her. It is like she will never be cold again.

She walks into his arms and puts her lips to his ear.

_Okay_.

END


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